The Bishie Sparkle
by Easily Forgotten
Summary: Taiga has an issue. He's totally a bishounen, but the universe refuses to acknowledge him. Poor Riku can either fix the problem, or never finish another meal in peace and sanity. Written for Pointless But Original Talking's Secret Santa Gift Fic Exchange.


_Fic written for the Pointless But Original Talking Forum Holiday Fic Exchange._

**Assignment # 5**

**Fandoms: **PoT (extra: Eyeshield 21, Reborn)  
**Pairing/Groups You'd Like to Receive:**  
PoT: MomoRyo, Pillar pair, Silver pair, Seigaku, Hyotei  
ES21: Taiga/Riku, Juumonji/Sena, Yamato/Sena, Deimon, Oujo, Teikoku  
Reborn: BelFran, X27, DS, Varia, Kokuyo gang  
**Squicks/Turn Offs in Fic (receiving)**: Overflowing het that isn't crack. Angst that includes suicide, self-mutilation, things of the sort. Death in a tragic, non-detective novel way. Out of character. Drunk fics.  
**What You'd Like to See in Fic**: light to heavy humor. As long as it has bits of humor. :) Can be AU.  
**Gen/Het/Slash/Smut/None/All-of-the-above?**: Slash. Single character or group Gen. Smut (in receiving) is fine, but not required.  
**Your request**: SPARKLES. Or Sparkling. I don't care if it's just a passing mention or a general thought (like a fic with a 'sparkly' feel) or whatever. 8D 8D 8D It doesn't have to be crack, it can be slight to super serious (with slight humor at some intervals) if you can make 'sparkles' serious. 8Db

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**Title: **The Bishie Sparkle

**Pairings/Groups/Fandom: **RikuxTaiga, Eyeshield 21

**Rating: **T

**Warnings: **Some mentions of activities that aren't appropriate for kiddies and a whole truck full of crack.

**Notes: **This is actually my fourth attempt to make this request work and my fourth plotline. Ironically enough, it's the one with the least amount of plot and the most crack… -_-"

**Summary:** Taiga has an issue. He's totally a bishounen, but the universe refuses to acknowledge him. Poor Riku can either fix the problem, or never finish another meal in peace and sanity.

**Beta**: Now that I think about it, I probably should have filled this out before I sent it to Lin for beta-ing… Oh well. *shrugs* Thank you Linny~ Much love to you and your fixing of my bad grammar! *huggles*

**A/N / Message to the Receiver: **Gelly! *glomps* I kind of figured that I had you since when I went to go look up RikuxTaiga fics, 9 out of 13 were written by you, and the rest were inspired by you if not written _for_ you. And here we have another fic to add the number~ I was actually planning to make sparkles into serious business, but the two plotlines that sort of made them serious were taking too long to write -_-" Instead, I offer crack inspired by the Eyeshield 21 page of TV Tropes. At any rate, even though it feels weird to be posting a non-PoT fic for a PoT forum exchange, writing this reawakened my love for Eyeshield 21~ (probably because I reread the series in order to try to get decent characterizations for everyone XD) For everyone who's not Gelly, please don't shoot me for my first Eyeshield 21 attempt. I know it's ridiculous, but meh. That's just how life works. ... Wow. This format-thing ended up being almost as long as the fic itself. That's kinda sad…

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The Bishie Sparkle is a unique trait bestowed by the gods upon the ridiculously good-looking. The term comes from a combination of the words "bishounen", a Japanese phrase used for "pretty boys" (shortened by English-speakers to "bishie"), and sparkle, creating an apt description condensed into a two-word title as the sparkles tend to be a direct result of a pretty boy being ridiculously good-looking. This phenomenon is most commonly seen in shoujo manga, typically utilized by a named character who just did something really awesome, or a character who's just _so_ ridiculously good-looking that he exudes sparkles _all the time_. In recent years; however, the Sparkle has broken into the shounen domain as well. However, its usage in shounen manga is slightly different than in its shoujo counterpart. While it _can_ be used simply to showcase the ridiculously good-looking or the incredibly charming, it often marks the character as being excessively effeminate and very unmanly. However, this negative description doesn't really matter because the fangirls say so. (Really, pretty boys just make everything better and being pretty doesn't make them any less awesome. And since _everything_ is better with pretty boys, the Sparkle, which is a pretty boy marker, is not allowed to have a negative connotation.) The Bishie Sparkle is for the ridiculously good-looking. End of story. There's only one problem with the Sparkle. Kamiya Taiga doesn't have it.

"It's just not fair!" announced the sparkle-less boy one evening over dinner.

Riku, the boy's dining companion, pinned him with a flat stare and his what-the-heck-are-you-talking-about face that he always gave people who shouted random things at him while he was trying to eat his spaghetti. "Taiga, if this is about how your legs are longer, but I'm still faster, then we've been over this way too many times already."

"It's not that!" Riku chose to be benevolent and let the mumbled: "I can run faster than you if I want to" slide. "It's just that, I'm the coolest guy around. Or maybe that's a little too much? I'm still a really cool guy though, right?"

"You have your moments," Riku admitted, taking another bite of spaghetti.

"Then why don't I sparkle?"

At this point, Riku put down his fork, the pasta curled around its tines forgotten for the sake of emphasizing his what-the-heck? face. "Say what?"

"Why don't I sparkle? You know how in manga whenever the really cool guy does something amazing, he always sparkles? Why doesn't that ever happen to me?" questioned Taiga as he slid his chair back and crossed his long legs. He was totally not pouting, because that would be unmanly and totally not cool. That kind of stuff was for cute guys like Riku, not a cool guy like him who deserved the Bishie Sparkle.

"I hate to break it to you, but this is real life, not some manga or weird fantasy land. Vampires don't sparkle in the sunlight, and neither do people."

Taiga scoffed, "I realize you've gotten used to my own coolness, so other people might not seem as amazing, but it's impolite to pretend that their sparkles don't exist."

"Name one person who sparkles," demanded Riku, shooting a well-aimed glare across the table. Taiga's ego was a little much at the best of times, but this was just insanity.

"Kisaragi from the Hakushuu Dinosaurs," shot back Taiga as coolly as he claimed he was.

"Kisaragi…?" Hands hit the table as Riku was hit by a bought of insight. "Wait. You aren't talking about those sissy sparkles that pretty boys have, are you?"

"They're not for sissys. A girl in the stands explained them to me when I saw Kisaragi giving them off during your match, not that I didn't know already, but I thought I'd be a gentleman and let her show off what she knew. Those sparkles let you know if someone's "ridiculously good-looking", or at least really charming. I'm a pretty charming guy myself, so something is seriously wrong if guys like Kisaragi from the Dinosaurs and Taki from the Devilbats get sparkles and I don't."

"… I think Taki sparkling is just the universe's idea of a joke. Besides, how charming you are and how cool you are are two completely different things," remarked Riku, who was slowly being dragged into the insanity. "You keep claiming how you should be sparkling because of how cool you are, but I've had a few cool moments myself and I'm still normal. How about the time I was going to take the fall for some jerk in the stands who insulted Banba? Gaou would've destroyed everyone in the bleachers if it weren't for me."

"I'll admit that that _was_ a pretty cool moment." Riku smirked in preparation for his upcoming verbal victory in midst of this madness. "_But_," the smirk faded and a glare settled in, "Riku, you're the cute type. Cute types don't sparkle."

Taiga wisely took Riku's raised eyebrow as a signal that if he wanted to have any fun with Riku in their nice warm bed instead of spending cold, lonely nights sleeping on the couch, he'd better shut up. Riku didn't need to know that he was more suited to the fuzzy pink puff-balls of cuteness that popped up whenever the boy saw a particularly yummy-looking slice of cake. Nope, he would be just fine without that knowledge and Taiga would be just fine enjoying Riku like a particularly yummy slice of cake.

Taiga coughed, trying the derail any thoughts Riku might have had concerning the harming of his person. (Riku-less nights were quite painful, as was Riku plus his Rodeo Drive plus certain anatomical parts belonging to Taiga that would rather not meet a pissed Riku at full speed.)

"I still think I deserve some sparkles," he grumbled.

Riku, obviously still miffed at the "cute-type" comment, resumed shoveling his forgotten spaghetti into his mouth, chewing with more force than necessary. At least he didn't kick Taiga out onto the couch. The old thing was perfectly fine for watching football games on, and a few other activities that didn't involve sleeping in the literal sense, but as a bed, it was about a bad as things could get. It wasn't long enough to accommodate Taiga's legs and it always left cricks in his back that would take forever to unwind. Yes, he knew this from experience with an unhappy Riku, and no, he would not like to experience it again if humanly possible.

As if the gods who denied Taiga his sparkles suddenly took pity on the poor boy, Riku stayed silent for the rest of the meal. It wasn't exactly a _good_ thing, but at least it wasn't the worst case scenario.

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A few days after the sparkle fiasco, Taiga was still moping about being sparkle-less (because he _was_ ridiculously good-looking enough for sparkles dammit! At least, he thought so.) when Riku stormed into the living room, fists clenched and knuckles white. Taiga, instinctively fearing retribution of the fuzzy pink variety, shrank a bit under Riku's glare. He prepped himself for the blow when Riku strode across the room and . . . kissed him silly?

It was a most welcomed surprise to say the least. Riku's hands running up and down his arms were a little clammy, probably from keeping his hands in such tight fists, but his lips were soft and warm and a sweep of tongue across his bottom lip had him not caring in the slightest what condition Riku's hands were in because his mouth was _so_ much more important. When the shorter boy finally pulled away, his fingers were tangled in Taiga's hair, and the boy in front of him was breathless. Psh. See if Taiga could claim that cute boys kissed like _that_. Riku smirked, licking his lip and sparing his partner an once-over.

"Hey Taiga," said Riku, stepping back and shoving his hands into his pockets, his smirk still firmly in place, "you're sparkling."

The other running back looked down at himself and sure enough, past the sleeves of his T-shirt, his arms were sparkling in the sunlight.

"Told you I deserved some sparkles." He grinned.

Riku remained blissfully silent with his hands still in his pockets. Taiga was happy again and Riku would be able to eat his next meal in peace, at least, as long as Taiga never found the bottle of glitter-lotion he'd hidden in his sock drawer.


End file.
